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When a lone soldier, Cole, arrives with news of Lachlan Agatta's death, all hope seems lost for Catarina. Her father was the world's leading geneticist, and humanity's best hope of beating a devastating virus. Then, hidden beneath Cole's genehacked enhancements she finds a message of hope: Lachlan created a vaccine.

Only she can find and decrypt it, if she can unravel the clues he left for her. The closer she gets, the more she finds herself at risk from Cartaxus, a shadowy organization with a stranglehold on the world's genetic tech. But it's too late to turn back.

There are three billion lives at stake, two people who can save them, and one final secret that Cat must unlock. A secret that will change everything.

This book is so damn cool. It was such a geekfest, but it also had plenty of badassery and action, with a sprinkling of romance. Yes, just a sprinkling.

This is a long book, but I was pulled in right from the beginning and swept along by the action and mystery and just cool sci-finess of it all. It was filled with action and a lot of OMG WHAT moments. Plus, Cat was just clever. Except not all the time. There were some moments where I could see why she did what she did, but honestly, I wouldn’t have made the same choices. (AND THAT’S OK. Enough with the hating on book characters when they don’t behave like you would. They are not you.) Personally, I would have been a lot more spiteful if someone had cut me up, so well done, Cat, for being the bigger person.

Another thing about the story that I want to applaud Suvada for is how she kept me guessing. Because she used Cat as the narrator, everything was coloured by Cat’s beliefs, which in turn was coloured by what Cat was taught by her genius father. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what was real and what was someone’s opinions, so I was just suspicious of everyone. And constantly intellectually stimulated.

The science was awesome. To be fair, I’m a science geek with a particular interest in evolution and genetics (I really should have studied it at university), so this book really was right up my alley. And because I do work in tech and love gadgets and apps, the talk of embedded tech that runs off your own calories (UM HELLO GUILT-FREE CHOCOLATE) was freaking awesome. Imagine being able to change your hair colour with some code, or see in the dark. (Look, I’m scared of the dark, ok.) My concern, not with the book itself, but with what would happen if this technology was available, is how it would affect the environment and evolution and food chains. Being able to play god with not only your DNA, but designing plants and animals, is a dangerous path to go down.

So the premise of an apocalyptic virus is nothing new. We have countless stories of viruses that wipe out large swathes of humanity. This one has a taste of zombie-ness to it, with the virus causing first a fever and then a slow destruction of the body (with a sudden end) over a few weeks. BUT Suvada adds a scary awesome twist to the whole zombie thing which I will not spoil but is gruesome and clever. But gruesome. Ew. You quickly learn about this twist at the start of the book, and it blew my mind, along with what the red mist on the book’s cover represents.

Now, I can understand that this won’t be to everyone’s liking. I have seen some other reviews that say the science was a bit much, and it is one of the most technical YA books I’ve ever read. It does get super geeky, so I think, to really enjoy This Mortal Coil, you need to have an interest in science and future tech, plus a basic understanding of DNA so you can get to grips with how the tech works. I have the benefit of being super geeky, plus I studied anatomy and physiology at uni.

Basically, this book was cool and I really need to stop saying cool now. But really, it was cool. I’m totally having a nerdgasm right now. But I also needed the next book immediately because my mind has been completely screwed with.

PS – What about the waffles? You don’t leave perfectly good waffles behind.

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